Action
by Keryl Raist
Summary: Okay, a sexy email... He can do this, right? Sequel to Am I Still and Research.


Okay, sexy email. He can do this.

And the cursor just sits there, blinking at him.

_Come on!_

Blink, blink, blink…

The fact of the matter is that Tim's never actually written a sex scene, nothing more explicit than 'making love on the crystal sands of her homeland,' and a few passionate kisses.

He has written love poems. And he's sure he will again, but that's not the point of this right now, and… and this close to flipping out over them being too 'close' and needing 'space' means he doesn't want to start whipping out love poetry because he doesn't want her thinking it's just because of the bombing.

So… sexy email. _Come on, you can do this. Just words, on a screen, you're good at words on a screen. People pay you money to put words on a screen._

Blink, blink, blink…

_Okay, so what goes into a sexy email? Obviously not wanna bend you over and get it on._

Because that doesn't work anymore. Not that they ever did that. Though now, as he remembers, fondly, how a few of those skirts of hers would just brush the backs of her thighs, he's thinking he really should have just stepped up close behind her, kissed her ear and neck, and slipped his fingers up those skirts, and gotten it on then and there.

Should have pulled her panties off with his teeth and licked her until her knees buckled and did it again just for kicks before bending her over, beautiful butt in the air, squeezing and petting, listening to her moan as he did it, before slipping into her and savoring the view of his body sliding into hers.

But he didn't. Not like that. And now it's too late.

_That's depressing as hell. Here let's rub some salt into that lemon juice you just poured on that wound, vodka, too, and set fire to it while you're at it._

He rubs his forehead and refocuses, exhaling loudly. So… sexy email. Something they actually can do… Something she can feel, really feel, not just a dull sort of fullness and a vague sense of motion.

_Hi Delilah,_

He deletes that almost before he finishes typing it.

_Hi. Yeah, that's sexy._

_Free write it. Don't think it, just let it out._

He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and starts typing.

_Been thinking about your lips today. About how pink and soft they are. How they're just the right size for your face. _

_Okay, no that's dumb._ He deletes the thing about the size of her lips, and then firmly remindes himself that the point of free writing is to just get it out. He can edit later.

_Been thinking about how they feel against my fingers. How it looks when you kiss my knuckles, or take them into your mouth. How it feels, all soft and wet around them, the light press of your tongue, and the slight rasp of tooth._

_Been thinking about that._

_Thinking about your lips on mine. Soft pressure, hard pressure, slip and glide. Of your tongue in my mouth, stroking mine, and my tongue in yours, and the back-forth in-out of slow, wet kissing getting faster and deeper._

_Been thinking of your throat, pale and soft, skin so smooth, and that spot where the scent of your skin and perfume mix. Been thinking of the heat of your throat on my lips, and feeling your pulse quiver beneath my teeth as I scrape them over your skin._

_Been thinking of your shoulders, and how you moan when I press my thumbs into that spot that gets so sore on the right one. Thinking of that red teddy of yours, and how the one strap always slips off your left shoulder, and how I'll use my teeth to slide the right strap off. _

_The way the lace at the top comes to rest on your nipples. Teasing me with just little glimpses of the pink under the red, and following the strap with my lips, across your arm to the top of the teddy, giving it a gentle tug, and savoring your breasts. _

_Thinking about them a lot today. So soft and round and lovely. Love the way they look, and feel, and smell. Want to spend an hour kissing them, licking all over, making you moan and writhe under my mouth, hands tight in my hair, gasping from the pleasure of it. _

_Then back to your lips, soft, wet, open, lips. Want to feel them wrap around me. Want to see you take me in your beautiful, beautiful mouth, sucking me down, making me feel so good. Want you to get me so wet, and so hard._

_I'll straddle your hips, kissing you hard and deep, and then slip between your breasts, rubbing my hard against your soft, making both of us so happy. Setting my body and yours alight._

_Hope I see you soon._

_Tim_

He hit the send button before he could re-read it, because he knows if he doesn't he'll muck around with it and kill it.

* * *

So, sexy email done, he's sitting there, horny, nervous, jittery, and wondering what on earth to do next. It's barely eight o'clock. She probably won't even get a chance to read it for a few hours. Every other week her parents come to visit and "help" and beg her to move home with them.

She finds the help useful, the begging somewhere between frustrating and infuriating, and while he'll be over tomorrow and the next day, sticking around acting as something of a shield (they don't beg so much when he's around, though they keep staring at him, _you gonna step up and marry her, now that she's broken?_ awfully clear in their eyes), the first night they're in town has been just the three of them, and will likely continue to be so.

So, hours before nervous can end, before he can find out if she even likes the email. Might freak her out or make her sad or…

_Stop that!_

Still horny to go with nervous. Can't write something like that and not get excited. Could take matters into his own hands, but decides to wait for later, he's not too tired yet, and if he waits until bedtime it'll help him sleep better.

Could give Rachel a call and make an appointment. He knows her number, has it in his phone, had to call her to get her to do his paperwork…

But that would mean committing to actually talking about this stuff.

Tony offered to listen… but… Delilah's here and still wants him and… And Ziva's gone, and Tim isn't blind, he saw how Tony fell apart when he came back, how he was falling apart while looking for her. He's never asked what happened with them. He knows.

And for all Tony's offered to listen, he's talking to strangers, not Tim, which makes him think he's not really interested in that sort of closeness. And Tim's not opening himself up to that, not if it's a one way street.

Can't talk to Gibbs. He bought the box and picked out the flowers and laid his girls to rest. He would have given anything to be where Tim is.

He can talk to Abby, but he already knows her advice, go talk to Rachel, which makes sense, she's not a counselor. She can listen, she can be sympathetic, but in that she's just as good at not dealing with things as he is, she's the myopic leading the near blind, and when it comes down to it, just saying it probably isn't enough. There's probably more to it than just saying he's angry.

Probably. But he doesn't know, because he's not a counselor, either.

He doesn't want to talk about it. He doesn't want to deal with it. But he dials the phone anyway, because when it comes down to it, he knows himself well enough to know that Abby's right, and the rest of this isn't going to work if he's lugging this much anger and sad and guilt around.

* * *

It's ten thirty when he hears a knock on his door.

"You couldn't call first, Tony?" he mutters under his breath, heading to the door. "What?" he's saying as he swings it open.

"Hi." Delilah is grinning up at him, big, wide smile.

He stares at her, goggling a bit. Then jumps out of the way, holding, the door open for her as she rolls in.

"Hi. I wasn't expecting you…"

He's in his t-shirt and boxers, toothbrush still in hand. He puts that down fast, and shuts the door, relocking it.

"You think you can write an email like that and not get a late night booty call, Timothy McGee?"

"You liked it?" he asks, feeling the smile spread across his face.

"Come here."

He kneels on the floor, right next to her, and she kisses him, long and deep, tongue dancing with his. "Got the email, knew I had to get over here, but wanted to change first, find that teddy. When I was getting out of what I'd had on for dinner with my parents, I noticed I was wet through my panties, through my skirt. Little damp spot on the chair."

That hits him hard, blood rushing to his dick at the idea of her that wet, that slick. She didn't get wet last time, because that's a mind game now, not a physical thing, and they didn't take the time to get the mind game going ahead of time.

"Really?" He's unbuttoning her coat, helping her get free of it.

"Oh yeah." She's got on a little black dress under her coat, and he can see that the left strap of the teddy has already slipped off her shoulder. "Thought, maybe, you'd like a taste."

He groans at that. "God, yes." Then shifts over, kneeling in front of her, folding back the foot rests on the chair, and also the arm rests. She figures out what he's doing, and moves her right leg to the side so he can kneel between them. He gets his hands under her butt, pulling her flush to him, she wraps her arms around his shoulders, and he picks her up, heading to his bed.

* * *

Friday night. Movie night. Work's in the can, and he's driving toward her place.

Her parents have returned home, but he's got the sense her dad's going to look him up for some 'guy time' the next time they're in town. He's not relishing the idea of that. They appear to be having a hard time figuring out if he's still here because he wants to be, or because he feels guilty about leaving, and he can kind of understand why they're worried about that. He completely broke down and then ran off and vanished for thirty hours when they got the news. But that's at least two weeks off, so worrying about it right now isn't a good plan.

They're alone, and since he's not on call, and she's still on sick leave, they'll be alone all weekend.

Lots of time to relax and play and enjoy each other.

* * *

Nine Songs was on Netflix. Uncut 9 ½ Weeks he had to borrow from Tony. (It was also on Abby's hot movie list, and she had an asterisk that indicated that it might be good for getting a conversation about subbing going, too.) So, in one hand he's got take-out Chinese. (They may try going out to a restaurant later, or just eat in. She's still getting used to being out, and being stared at, and all the rest of it. So, he's happy to play it by ear, and honestly, he's never going to have a problem with dinner in. His own introverted personality has no issues with quiet and private.) In the other he's got his keys (one to her place, too) and Tony's DVD.

He heads in and finds her in front of her computer.

"Hey," she says over her shoulder.

He sets the food and movie on her kitchen table, and heads over, leaning down to kiss her, and then looks over her shoulder at her screen.

"Remoting into work?"

"Yeah. Going bonkers just sitting here. Wanna do something useful."

"Cool. How's it going?"

She smiles at him. "The codes are still the same. They don't care if I can stand up or not. That feels really good."

"Great. You want to keep at it? I can toss the food in the oven and amuse myself for a few hours."

"Nah. Let me get to the end of this, and we'll eat."

"Okay. I'll set the table."

* * *

They talk about what she's doing. In a general sort of way. Algorithms, plans, codes. Her clearance is higher than his, so she can't talk specifics, but it's good to have someone to bounce ideas off of, who can, on occasion, take a look at the code and see the bugs that she's blind to because she wrote it in the first place. (She does that for him, too. Both of them find it very useful.)

They talk about her big plan for the weekend, getting a car. Until the accident, she used the metro for basically everything and would just rent one when she needed to get out of the city.

And while the metro is 'disabled friendly' the fact that her apartment is a mile from the nearest stop isn't. (The fact that her job is a quarter mile, and his apartment is three blocks from one is less important, but still matters. Until she builds up a lot more upper body strength, a mile is a very long way to go rolling herself.)

So, she needs to find a car, one that can be modified for hand controls, and one that she can get her chair into and out of easily enough.

Of course, that also means she needs to learn how to get into and out of the chair and into a car. She's been practicing that some in the passenger seat, in his car and her parents', but the acid test is doing it with a steering wheel in the way. After all, it's not like she can stand up, fold up the chair, tuck it into the back seat, and go. He has a feeling she'll be working on that with his car a bit before going out to try out other cars.

Might suggest heading over to Gibbs'. Sure it's not completely private, but he's got a driveway and it's a whole lot less of an audience than she'd get in her parking garage or his.

"You want me to go?" he asks. He hates car shopping, but he'll go along if she wants company.

She shakes her head. "A ride would be great, but I know if you go in there with me, they'll try to sell you a car, and I'll just be a cute little appendage."

"Then I'll chauffer."

* * *

Movie night at his place is in his bedroom. Because that's where his TV is. Movie night at her place is in the living room, because that's where her TV is.

He's thinking maybe grabbing one of their computers and watching in bed, given the kind of movie night this is, might be a good plan, but… there's not really a good vantage point to see from. And her sofa's comfy. Not conveniently located when it comes to lube or condoms, but… he's got pockets. It's not an unsolvable problem.

Not like they've never done it on her sofa before.

He holds up 9 ½ Weeks, and queues up Nine Songs on Netflix. "Lady's choice. Which looks more interesting to you?"

She's reading the description of Nine Songs and says, "I'm going to get to know your co-workers a lot better than I ever intended to."

He laughs. "I was trying not to think about that."

"So, they look interesting and all, but, what about your favorite?"

"My favorite what?" He asks, cagily.

"Hot movie? How about I get to know you a whole lot better?"

"Ergh." He can feel the blood rushing to his cheeks and forehead.

"Tim?" She's looking at him intensely.

"Don't really have one." He's shaking his head. "What's yours?"

"Wow! That was a fast topic change. You really don't have one? Nothing you've ever seen has made you want to grab the nearest woman and get it on?"

An inarticulate sound echoed out of him.

"Oh, come on, how bad can it be?"

He winces a little and then looks her in the eye. "I… uh…" He licks his lips. "When I want plot, dialog and storyline, I pick one kind of movie, and those usually aren't sexy. And when I want sexy, I usually pick another sort of movie, and those don't have a lot of plot, dialog or storyline."

"'Oh my God, you watch porn! I'm shocked! Shocked!' said no woman ever." He can barely articulate how reassuring he finds that. "What's your favorite? One you go back to most often?"

His eyes go wide, reassuring rapidly skittering away. Nice to know she's not freaked out by the idea of it, but actually watching… "You really want to…"

"Sure. I mean… It's okay, right?"

"I… guess so… Just… you know, lots of women think porn's kind of icky."

She shrugs. "We're both expanding our repertoire. Besides, if it's icky, I'll tell you, and that'll be that. We'll try something else."

"'That'll be that' sometimes means I boot you out of the house and we break up."

Delilah starts to look disturbed. "What the hell are you into? I mean, how kinky is this?"

"It's… not vanilla, but… it's not too far off the beaten track. You'll show me yours, though, right? We see mine; we see yours?"

"Sure. So bring on your smut."

"Okay." He took a minute to get it set up. (Well, technically, it wasn't his favorite, this is in the top five, but is a little less kinky than his favorite.) And once it was, and the video started downloading, he was sort of babbling about how the dialog sucked and the set up was implausible and the acting wasn't great and…

"Shhh… It's porn." Delilah says, putting a finger to his lips. "I've seen porn before. I'm not expecting Hamlet."

There aren't opening credits so much. Mostly just a title sequence. It's an amateur production, which Tim prefers because people who are doing this to get themselves off are actually having fun, and the pros all look sort of bored to him.

But, three seconds in, as the title is just fading off the screen, Delilah pauses the video, and he feels himself tense up. If she can't get through the title, (Naughty School Girl's Surprise, yeah, like he was saying to her, the dialog sucks, the set-up is improbable, the title… blah, blah, blah. It's porn, not Hamlet.) this is not going to work at all.

"Too much?" he says, wincing, waiting for the get-the-hell-out-of-my-house reaction.

"No. Just, porn, not Hamlet. We're both way too dressed for this."

His eyebrows hop up, pleased by that, even more pleased as she begins unbuttoning his shirt.

* * *

Okay, sitting on her sofa, both of them naked, her between his legs, her legs draped over his, able to touch and feel her all over him while the naughty school girl gets spanked and then licked, and by that point they were on their sides, him slipping into her from behind while fingering her slow and hard, (Which she said was good, but he doesn't know what good means, and it worries him.) as the principal bent the school girl over the desk and did her steady and hard until they were both gasping and moaning worked… well enough.

Not having a set 'end goal' is still troubling for him. He doesn't know when it's okay to finish. Reading up said that some women with SCI could climax from genital stimulation, even if they didn't have a lot of sensation, and if there's any shot of that, he doesn't want to not get her over the line, but… but they don't yet know if there's any shot of that.

Worrying about it does keep him nicely toned down. Can probably go all night if he can't switch out of that mindset.

But the movie's getting set to end, and it's supposed to get him hot, and hot movie plus her body on his should have a certain result, so he focuses in on how it feels (very, very good) and less on what he's trying to do, and it doesn't take long to get off.

* * *

They're snuggling on the sofa, after. He'd gotten up to deal with the condom, and is now laying on his side, facing her. He's petting her arm and shoulder, running his fingers lightly over her skin, while she strokes his sternum, gently playing with his chest hair.

"We could do that, you know? The spanking stuff. I'd probably be able to feel that, too."

He nods, she probably would.

"Might feel good."

"Might." He's nodding again.

"You don't look really enthusiastic. Why not?"

Good question given this is supposed to be his hot movie. He rubs his face and bites his lip, would probably scoot back a bit, but he's already back against the back of the sofa. "I… um… kinda… prefer to be on the receiving end of things."

"Oh!" That's something that obviously hadn't occurred to her.

"Yeah. I mean, I can do both sides of it, but I like taking a whole lot better than giving. Kind of difficult to get past twenty million years of don't hit girls."

"Huh." She thinks about that for a moment. "Might have to spend a bit working out the mechanics, but I bet I could do that, too."

He's looking a whole lot more enthusiastic now, and also a whole lot nervous. "Would you want to? Like, do you think you might enjoy it, or… or is just something you'd be doing for me?"

"How much of that do you like?"

The movie had been pretty light on the domination and submission thing, but it got the most basic of the ideas across. "I… I like all of it. I like being given orders and then doing exactly what I'm told to do, and doing it very, very well. And I like getting petted for doing it very, very well. I like not being in charge. I mean, not all the time, I like variety and being in control sometimes, too, so it's more of a hobby than a kink, but, I do like it."

She nods a little, fitting that into what she knows about him. "That makes sense. What kind of orders?"

"Whatever you like. Sex, not sex, tell me to put up shelves for you, and I will. Play with me for hours and tell me not to come, and I will. But the rewards part is usually intimate, physical, and not always sex, but almost always some sort of praise and touch."

"Though in the case of not getting off for an hour, you'd prefer a sex reward?"

"Yeah." He nods vigorously. "That long and not getting off starts to hurt. But the sex is just part of the reward, there's usually cuddling and praise and… and it's just really warm and safe and… very nice. I've got better videos to give you an idea of how it works."

"You can be the one in charge, though. It's just not your preference?"

"Yeah, I can."

"Then, how about you show me how it works. Show me what you like. I'll read up on it later."

"Really?" He's never had anyone who wasn't already into this offer to get into it for him. In fact, the few women he'd mentioned it to who weren't already into it more or less ran screaming away.

"Yeah, really. Not like this is anything I've ever given any thought to, but… right now it's sounding awfully good."

"Okay, so this starts with talking. Hard boundaries. Things you will not do. Things I can't ask you for."

"Uh…" Delilah looks startled by that. "What were you going to ask for?"

"Hadn't gotten that far in the plan, yet." The video had ended with anal sex. "Anal?" They hadn't ever done that before.

"Not an issue for me anymore. Might feel good, or at least feel like something, so sure, I'm fine with that."

"How about doing it to me?" They really hadn't done that, or anything at all like it, before.

Her eyes went way, way wide. "Like, with what? A dildo?"

"Do you have one?" he asks, blushing furiously.

"Uh… yeah… Really? You like that?"

"I haven't tried _that._" He answers, not quite looking at her, but he catches her eyes again as he continues, "I was thinking fingers, actually. Prostate play is a lot like getting your g spot and feels pretty awesome with a blow job."

She thinks about that for a few seconds, probably working through it in her mind. "Kind of messy?"

He nods. "Yeah. Kind of. I'd make sure I was clean first, but yeah, especially without the right prep, it can be. And if it's too messy, or you don't like it, that's not a problem. That's why we talk about it first, figure out where the lines are. When you're in charge you do the same for me, find the hard lines and don't step over them."

"What are your hard lines?"

"Don't humiliate me. Don't degrade me. No marks anywhere anyone can see them. Don't gag me. My safeword is Tibbs. I say that, and everything stops. Stop or no, means slow down and check in, make sure I'm still good. Sometimes I'm playing, sometimes it'll mean I got so into it I lost my safeword."

"Tibbs?"

"I can almost always remember it, and it's never, ever going to occur naturally during sex."

"Good point. 'Stop' is my safeword. I say that, we stop."

"Okay. I'll treat 'no' like that, too?"

"Yeah. Don't want to have to remember any sort of code. I say 'no,' you stop."

"Not a problem."

"Why a safeword? Why not just 'no?'"

He licks his lips and sighs a bit. This was the part that tended to freak other women out. "Sometimes being… overpowered… is kind of fun. If you like being out of control," he closes his eyes, hoping this doesn't make her want to run away, "being able to say 'no,' and then having that 'no' be ignored… It's… freeing. It's… ummm… out of your hands then. You've still got your safeword, so it's still a game, but… the illusion of denying consent is powerful."

"If I'm ever looking for that, I'll let you know."

"That works."

"But that's something you like?"

"Sometimes. I spend so much time in my head, thinking through everything, worrying about what people think about what I'm doing, nervous, and… It all goes away. I'm just there, in the moment, completely in my body and out of the part of my head that's so concerned about the rest of the world. Someone else takes the worry and care and concern, and my whole word narrows down to doing what they want, making them happy, and anticipating the reward for doing that.

"People who don't know how it works think it's some sort of rape fantasy. Maybe for some people that's part of it. But for me it's having a very set goal, set rules, and the freedom and release that comes from not being in charge for an hour or two."

She thinks about that for a moment. "Is this something you used to do with Abby?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"I think so?"

"Yeah. But it didn't work all that well because she doesn't Dom at all, and I'm a switch, but prefer to sub. I couldn't control her as hard as she liked, and she couldn't run me, period. The illusion doesn't work if the person Doming can't act through that control well enough to be convincing about it. We were both a little too polite, too, is this really okay with you, to keep the image of it going. So, we love each other, always will, but we're not a good match for anything more than close friendship."

"Is close friends all you are?" He's told her that they were lovers once upon a time. He was sort of vague as to when precisely once upon a time was. He doesn't know, what, if anything Abby's said to her about that.

"Now. Last time we got together was 2010, and we hadn't hooked up for a year before that. We were friends with sporadic benefits for almost a decade."

"You two ever going to hook up again?" She sounds a little sharp as she asks that, he can hear the worry in her voice.

He gives her a long look and says, "I'd imagine that would have a whole lot to do with whether or not you intend on dumping me. If you mean, am I going to fool around on you, or go looking for something or someone else, no. I'm more than good here with you. If you mean, should I find myself single again, which I'd rather not be, would we hook up for some comfort sex should something bad happen or celebratory sex should something really good happen, sure. Last time we got together was the day after Mike Franks died. That's our pattern. If we're single and bad stuff happens, we turn to each other for comfort. And sometimes we'd celebrate really good things. And in more than a decade, if one of us is seeing someone else, we've never crossed that line, and we're not going to.

"Abby loves you, too, thinks you're the best thing that's ever happened to me, she's not going to put either of us into a sticky situation, and I'm sure as hell not going to do it, either."

"Abby loves me, too?"

He doesn't understand what precisely she's asking here, so he says, "Of course she does; she loves everyone."

"_Too?_"

And suddenly he knows exactly what she's asking. "Oh."

"Oh?"

"That wasn't how I was planning on saying it."

"Technically, you still haven't said anything," she says, eyebrow high.

He smiles sheepishly. "Thought if I said it this soon after the bombing that you'd think… especially given what we were fighting about right before…"

"What?"

"That'd you'd think it was just fear talking, or guilt. Or that I was just trying to make you feel good. And I wasn't sure if you… Thought I'd wait a bit, make sure things were stable again."

"God, you really do spend too much time in your head," she says with a quick kiss.

He flashes her a _well, that's just who I am_ sort of look.

"So, who else loves me?"

He smiles at her. "I do."

She kisses him gently. "Me, too. So, tell me more about how this works…"


End file.
